


Simple as Breathing

by Chantress



Series: Across the Universe [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: "Communing With The Living Force": Not A Euphemism In This Case, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Bisexual Han Solo, Gardening, Gratuitous Squash, Multi, Obi-Wan Drinks: It's Canon, Poly Feels, Pre-Relationship, everything is poly and nothing hurts, han is bad at feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7684471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Galaxy's at war, but meanwhile, in a hidden temple of the Living Force, Han contemplates polyamory and a princess over Corellian brandy, and Obi-Wan has some points.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple as Breathing

If only Leia were someone he'd met in a cantina, Han thought, frowning as he shifted to find a more comfortable position against the tree he was sitting under. He knew how to talk to people in cantinas. It would make everything so much _easier._  
  
Problem was, though, that the princess wasn't the type of person to bum around in a cantina. And the type of people who did? Han was well acquainted with them already. All pretty much the same, no matter their gender or species: good for a night of fun, maybe even several. But nothing more than that. And Leia was...  
  
_A flash of fire in dark eyes as they debated some point they'd both lost track of along the way, lips curving just so because she knew she was right but still wanted to hear him try to justify his position. The delicate arch of a bare foot, glimpsed only briefly as she passed by, striding so determinedly that entire star systems would have moved out of her way. A cascade of laughter, unfettered by any notions of royal propriety. The scent of flowers and growing things. A fiercely beautiful inferno of starlight in a body that should have been far too small to contain it all._  
  
...Well, she was _definitely_ more than that.  
  
Han groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. _Solo,_ he told himself wryly, _you've got it_ bad.  
  
Which just brought him back around to his original problem again. For all the time they'd spent together since he and Chewie had picked up their unexpected passenger, Han still had no idea how to talk to her. At least not about anything important--like, say, the way he felt about her, and the way she might (possibly) feel about him. Off-color remarks and sarcastic jabs were easy enough, but any time he tried to say anything else, with those huge brown eyes watching him and (or was it just his imagination?) softening just a little as she waited for him to speak, it was like he forgot how to breathe, all the words he'd rehearsed so carefully in the privacy of his own mind turning to dust choking his throat.  
  
And that wasn't the only obstacle.  
  
Han forced himself to look across the Temple gardens to where the two of them were picking vegetables for the evening meal, although the Jedi in question would no doubt call it something different were he asked--"communing with the Living Force" or something like that. They were far enough away that any conversation would have been too faint for him to make out, but they weren't talking. Just working, side by side. Innocent enough, really. But there was an undercurrent of _togetherness_ running between them, bright and warm and easy as the honey-gold late afternoon sunlight that filled the garden, that made Han's heart ache all the same.  
  
He'd never seen them kiss, or hold hands, or do anything else to suggest that their relationship was anything beyond that of teacher and student. But somehow Han knew, as clearly as if they'd told him, that Leia and Master Jinn were, if not romantically involved, then at least interested in becoming so. _Extremely_ interested.  
  
Han shifted position against the tree again, firmly setting that line of thought aside. It would be a lot easier to be jealous if he didn't find them _both_ so kriffing attractive! he thought sourly.  
  
"Credit for your thoughts."  
  
Han scowled as Obi-Wan settled himself down in the shade beside him. "Can't a man have a decent sulk in this place? Every damn time, one of you has to come along and try to jolly me out of it."  
  
"You're living in a Temple full of Force-sensitive beings, and you have no discernible volume control on your emotions. You do the math." Smiling wryly, Obi-Wan took out the flask he carried on his belt and handed it to Han. "Well, since I don't have any credits on me at the moment, this will have to do. Besides, if your thoughts are running in the direction I think they are, you could use a stiff drink. Or two."  
  
Han nodded his thanks and took a swig. Real Corellian brandy--pretty much the only thing he'd missed about his home planet. Trust Master Kenobi to carry the good stuff.  
  
"Is it really that obvious?" he said resignedly, passing the flask back.  
  
Obi-Wan snorted in a decidedly un-Jedi-like way. "If it were any more so, you'd be pulling on her pigtails and shouting anatomically inaccurate rhymes at her across the playground."  
  
Han winced. A little too astute an observation, that--both of the depths of his infatuation, and of how he'd been showing it to Leia thus far.  
  
"What about you, though?"  
  
Obi-Wan just looked at him, one eyebrow raised, a faint smile of amusement on his lips.  
  
"I mean, aren't you and Master Rules over there... you know..." Han gestured vaguely, trying to come up with a way of putting it that wouldn't be too crude. "...Involved?"  
  
"We are."  
  
"So aren't you even a little bit jealous? I dunno, I guess there's that weird Jedi rule about relationships and attachments and everything, but you're still human underneath all that. Or so I've heard, anyway," Han couldn't resist adding, although he did manage to keep most of the snideness out of his tone this time.  
  
Obi-Wan took a thoughtful swallow of brandy, gazing over to where his bondmate and the princess were still working as he let the silence stretch out in a way Han would have found uncomfortable if he'd been talking to anyone else. The Jedi Master, though, had a way of making it seem perfectly natural, a comfortable counterpoint to the conversation that lent the subject at hand a depth and significance which words alone could not have conveyed.  
  
"Qui-Gon," he said at last, "is as much a part of me as my breath. His love for me is my life and my strength, and our bond has given purpose to my days and carried me through times of utter ruin and despair.  
  
"But I no more own him than I can own the air in my lungs. If I hold my breath, try to keep it all for myself out of fear that someone else might breathe it besides me, I'll eventually pass out, and my body will force me to breathe whether I want to or not.  
  
"And who could ever be jealous of something as generous as the air, anyway?" His eyes shining, Obi-Wan spread his hands wide, encompassing the garden and all inside it with the simple gesture, although the effect was somewhat ruined by the flask he still held. "It gives us life, indiscriminately; links us together in the simplest and most elegant of ways. People, animals, trees, plants..."  
  
Han laughed, despite himself. "Sounds to me like you and the brandy are stretching this metaphor a little too far, old man," he said, snatching the flask away and draining the last of it in one swallow.  
  
"Obi-Wan!" Master Jinn called suddenly from across the garden, waving to his bondmate. "Come and help us carry all this to the kitchens, would you? The gourds are finally ripening, and I could use a hand with them."  
  
For some reason, this last part made Obi-Wan groan and blush like a much younger man. "Come on," he sighed, accepting his flask back from Han and getting to his feet more gracefully than his supposed state of inebriation would have suggested was possible. "If you ask me," he muttered as they walked down the path that led deeper into the garden, "my former Master takes a little _too_ much pride in the size of his squash."  
  
Surprisingly, Han's heart felt lighter than it had in a long time, even as Leia loaded him down with baskets heavy with produce. The warmth of the brandy in his stomach, the old-gold light of the sun as it dipped towards the horizon, the fond bickering of the two Jedi, the faint scent of sweat and earth rising from Leia's skin as she walked beside him... all of it combined into one perfect moment, stretching to crowd out all the doubts and insecurities that plagued him.  
  
Something of it must have showed in his face; Leia looked at him quizzically as she held the garden gate open for him, balancing her own basket more comfortably on her hip as she did so. She had a streak of dirt across one cheek, Han noticed, as though she had reached up to brush a strand of hair out of her face earlier, forgetting that she'd just been elbows-deep in the soil. She had never been more beautiful.  
  
"Everything all right?" she asked, falling back into step with him as the gate clanged shut behind them.  
  
Han considered the question for a moment. Ahead of them, Master Jinn had half-turned as he walked, the better to tease his lover about the vegetables they carried. Noticing Han watching him, he threw a warm smile over his shoulder, silently including him in the joking camaraderie. And, maybe, in something else, too.  
  
Han took a deep breath and let it out, slowly.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "I think it's going to be."


End file.
